Things to do in Northern California?

[plowhog]

Spent the last week in Yosemite. Been awhile since I have been there. Awesome. Spectacular. One of a kind!

 

[Hughman]

Spent the last week in Yosemite. Been awhile since I have been there. Awesome. Spectacular. One of a kind!

The waterfalls are mind blowing this year.

 

[Sigarms]

Again, many thanks for all the information. My wife finally figured out that one reason why I come here is due to the information and advice (I printed all of the responses to give to her to read as well).

We only made one small tweak. We will be spending 2 nights in Monterey and one night in half moon bay. This should give us sufficient time literally on the coast and San Francisco on a Sunday to Muir woods (worst case, I don't think two trips down to Big Sur would be a huge loss). 2 day unaccounted back to back, which we will most likely be checking out the Lake Tahoe area with perhaps Nevada.

Wife will be taking notes on the drives and locations when we come back by ourselves later on in the future.

 

[ericm979]

The Monterrey Bay Aquarium is really cool. It's pretty good sized though, so plan a half day to see everything. The waterfront around it is pretty touristy but there's restaurants.

The Pigeon Point Lighthouse on 1 between HMB and Santa Cruz is worth a visit. There's tons of state beaches along that section of 1, and they're all nice. Ano Nuevo is where the elephant seals are.

On summer weekend days and fridays traffic can get bad in the afternoons on highway 1 in santa cruz and the beach towns to the south, and on 1 around HMB. Also on 17 and 92 leading to santa cruz and HMB.

The other day I saw a pic of the Tioga pass rd on twitter. That section is pretty beat up. There may be more road work than usual this summer in the high sierras.

 

[Sigarms]

The Monterrey Bay Aquarium is really cool. It's pretty good sized though, so plan a half day to see everything. The waterfront around it is pretty touristy but there's restaurants.

The Pigeon Point Lighthouse on 1 between HMB and Santa Cruz is worth a visit. There's tons of state beaches along that section of 1, and they're all nice. Ano Nuevo is where the elephant seals are.

On summer weekend days and fridays traffic can get bad in the afternoons on highway 1 in santa cruz and the beach towns to the south, and on 1 around HMB. Also on 17 and 92 leading to santa cruz and HMB.

The other day I saw a pic of the Tioga pass rd on twitter. That section is pretty beat up. There may be more road work than usual this summer in the high sierras.

Thanks.

The goal was not to keep driving back and forth to Angles Camp when trying to check out the shore line on 1, added I thought it best to deal with traffic in SF on a Sunday morning.

I have no doubt when the boy leaves home in Sept this year, the following year my wife and I will be back by ourselves.

I'm starting to understand why my parents started traveling a lot more after I left home

 

[California]

Just found an excellent video on SF tourism embedded in another SF Chronicle article. Worth viewing.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/increased-migration-bay-area-to-sacramento-18262928.php

Edit: Now one of the ads in the sidebar triggers my NoScript warning about going offsite. If you see that, click 'Block' to halt that ad from loading. It includes a rubiconproject cookie, to know its you when you hit an unrelated site. Not harmful but not relevant.

 

[Sigarms]

Again, thanks to EVERYONE for the feedback. Leaving tonight to stay in Charlotte for the early AM flight. Looking forward to it very much, but it seemed this week was non stop just playing catch up just to leave.

Got warm clothes as well as bringing pants

 

[Hughman]

Keep us posted on what you finally end up doing.

 

[California]

Heck, we would like to see photos from each part of your adventure here!

 

[kenmbz]

Have fun !